Thursday, September 29, 2016

The handsome and thoughtful hubby gifted me wifh a pasta maker on my birthday last year. But it just sat on my baking shelf forlorn and seemingly abandoned for quite some time now. In the midst of the chaos of meeting orders for cake, baking, exploring other forms of cake art and other culinary interests, the Atlas 150 was unfortunately relegated to the "archives" section of my mind. There it sat until a couple of weeks ago.

Amid my involuntary verbalized wish in jest for a sous vide machine and ice cream maker, I was gently chastised and reminded that I still have a brand new pasta maker gathering dusts on my shelf. Toinks.

Maybe it's all that endless watching of Gary, Jorge and Matt in Master Chef Australia. Maybe it' s the good-natured ribbing of the piggery. Maybe it's because it will be my birthday again in a couple of months. Maybe I finally just felt the urge to find out how my pasta maker works. Or maybe it is really the not-so subtle nudge of the hubby ? LOL. Whatever it is, just a couple of weeks ago I finally made my first batch of fresh fettucini from scratch via my brand new stainless Atlas 150 pasta maker. Yay!

Ingredients: (recipe by Mario Batali)

31/2 cups all purpose flour
4 large eggs

Method:

1 . Flour on a flat surface

2. Make a well in the middle

3. Put the 4 eggs in the well
4. Slowly incorporate the flour and the egg in the well without letting the egg escape.

5. Keep incorporating the flour into the eggs until it forms a ball.
6. Knead for 3-5minutes. It will be sticky. Put flour on yiur hands so that dough wont stick.
7. Using a bench scraper, scrapeall dough from the bottom of your table and continue to knead until it forms a ball
8. It will be messy but fun!

Using the Pasta Maker :
1.Wrap your dough in a cling wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes at room temperature.
2.After 30 minutes, divide your dough into 4 pieces.
3.Get the first piece. Dust with flour before rolling it through your pasta maker using setting number 1. Feed it thru the pasta maker 2x.It will be flat and thick.
4. Set your pasta maker to 6 or 7. Roll your dough 2x. You will notice your dough became thinner and transluscent.

5.Switch to the futtucine cutter and roll your pasta at setting 8. Notice how thin and precisely cut your fettucini are.Beautiful. Dust with flour and set aside in a line on a parchment-covered tray . Repeat for the three remaining dough pieces.
6. Meanwhile fill a pot . Season with salt. Boil.
7. As soon as it boils, drop the fresh fettucini. Give it 3 minutes.
8. Take out the fetuccini and let cool.
9. Make your pasta sauce

Note :
1. Sen Miriam Defensor Santiago passed on today. She is 71.
2. Sen. De Lima is still the apple of Duterte's eye to date